


Trepidations

by Jabberwocky (Sisterwives)



Series: Origins [3]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Gore, M/M, Surgery, Traumatic Amputation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-24 19:58:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12019908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sisterwives/pseuds/Jabberwocky
Summary: Roadhog has seen -- and caused -- a lot of bloodshed in his life, but nothing could have prepared him for this. Told in Roadhog's perspective, this is a retelling of the scene in my Origins fic where Junkrat loses his arm, including what happened when he was unconscious.Origins: http://archiveofourown.org/works/8697352





	Trepidations

**Author's Note:**

> Well, Roadhog has officially gotten his own comic, and it was glorious -- but with that, Origins is no longer canon compliant, much to my dismay. I'm sorry if anyone was looking forward to a third installment of the series, but I think I'm probably going to be retiring it, ahhh. It's really important to me to stay true to canon, and I can't do that anymore with the reveal of how they met differing so much from my approach :c But I hope you enjoy this sendoff, it's a response to a request I got a longass time ago for the scene where Junkrat loses his arm from Roadhog's perspective. Thank you so much for reading!!

Roadhog blamed himself.

In the aftermath of Piglet’s death, he let grief consume him, and Junkrat was the one to pay for his lapse in attention.

He tried to tell himself it wasn’t entirely his fault. Anyone would have been devastated by what he had been through. Seeing the pig you had adopted as your own pet carved open and roasting on a fire was enough to distract even the finest of bodyguards. It wasn’t like he hadn’t had a personal investment in Piglet, either -- the runt of the litter, with its oversized ears and brown spots, could have passed for one of the pigs he had raised twenty years ago. Piglet had been a reminder of better days, before radiation from the nuclear explosion had infiltrated his chest cavity and destroyed his already weak lungs. Before he’d realised that you could trust no one but yourself. Before he’d decided to go solo -- until, entirely against his will, Junkrat had wormed his way into his life.

_Junkrat._

He knew something was wrong when he realised that Junkrat had gone unnaturally quiet. The little freak was _never_ quiet. He couldn’t fall asleep at night without tossing and turning a good dozen times, accompanied by exaggerated sighs. Even when he took a leak, he talked to himself. Roadhog wasn’t sure whether he found the odd habit endearing or irritating. Either way, it was one of many quirks that made it impossible to ignore Junkrat’s presence. He was noisy, regardless of whether or not he had an audience.

When he realised that there was no distracted muttering or inane giggles coming from the bushes that Junkrat had disappeared through, his head snapped up.

“Junkrat.” He seized his scrap gun and charged in the direction of the shrubbery.

Roadhog was a man of instinct. He wasn’t _quite_ as impulse-driven as his scatterbrained partner (when, he wondered, did he begin to view Junkrat as one half of a duo, instead of merely the trouble-seeking employer he was supposed to protect?), but violence was his knee-jerk reaction to just about every unforeseen circumstance.

The sight of Junkrat pinned to the ground under the weight of another Junker, with a bloody stump of an arm and a gag in his mouth that muffled his agonised screaming, was as unforeseen as circumstances came.

He acted on pure instinct. He fired his scrap gun, and his target’s head exploded in a gory mess of brain matter and viscera. Nothing he hadn’t seen before. He dragged the headless corpse off of Junkrat and tossed it aside, where the dead weight landed with a wet thump.

Junkrat gasped for air the second Roadhog ungagged him. “What the hell did I hire ya for?” he said, voice cracking. “I’m down a fuckin’ arm thanks to you! Yer supposed to -- how the bloody _hell_ didn’t you see him?”

The words stung, but they were nothing compared to the pain Junkrat must have been in.

“I know,” Roadhog said. He tried to staunch the bleeding, but it was futile. He pulled his hand away to find it slick with blood, his fingers stained a bright red that he would see long after he’d washed it off. He’d thought he’d become desensitised to the sight over the years -- hell, he _relished_ reducing someone to a bloody pulp --  but seeing his partner wounded was a thousand times worse than his most brutal kill.

“I’m sorry. I was distract--” He stopped himself. Grief was a poor excuse. Mourning Piglet shouldn’t have kept him from doing his job. If anything, Piglet’s slaughter should have served as a reminder to never let his guard down. The second you let yourself grow complacent, you got butchered. “I’m sorry,” he finished.

Junkrat’s severed arm lay on the ground between them like some kind of sick Halloween prop. Roadhog pushed it aside. It wasn’t a clean cut -- if the ragged edges were indicative of anything, Junkrat’s attacker had needed a few good whacks to successfully chop off the forearm -- and he wasn’t harboring any delusions that they would be capable of reattaching it.

Besides, the sight of it was freaking him out, if he was being perfectly honest with himself.

The vitriol seeped out of Junkrat, and he went limp. His breaths came in staccato bursts, harsh and shallow, like a cornered jackrabbit. “I’m gonna die,” he whimpered.

“No, you’re not,” Roadhog said with the practiced conviction of a man who spent the better part of his adult life lying to others. He fished for a bandanna from his back pocket. It wasn’t the cleanest thing, but it had to be better than exposing the gaping wound to the elements.

“Yes I am!” Junkrat wailed. “Just leave me alone to _die!_ ” If it had been any other moment, Roadhog would have rolled his eyes at Junkrat’s histrionics, but given the current circumstances, he could forgive him for being a little hysterical.

Still, he couldn’t help but growl, “Don’t be melodramatic. I just lost Piglet, I’m not losing you too.” He wasn’t sure whether he was trying to convince Junkrat or himself.

Junkrat gave him a watery smile. “You _do_ care.” He reached his arm up towards Roadhog’s face, where it hung uselessly between them. Roadhog stared at the hovering stump, arrested by the sight of mangled flesh and bone. He tore his eyes away and went back to business. For all of his insistence that Junkrat wasn’t going to die, it was looking more likely by the minute. He needed to rig up some kind of tourniquet, anything to keep him from bleeding out until Roadhog could get him some proper medical assistance. The bandanna would work, but he needed something with enough tension to cut off the circulation in Junkrat’s arm. He reached for Junkrat’s belt and undid it, pulling it out of the loops of his shorts.

Junkrat’s giggle turned into a barely choked-back sob, and he managed a twisted smile. “What, now ya wanna get in my pants? This gets ya goin’?” He waved the bloody stump.

It was horribly, wildly inappropriate, and Roadhog couldn’t even begin to address everything that was wrong with Junkrat’s depraved little joke. “Shut. Up,” he said. It came out angrier than intended, but he was under a lot of mental strain at the moment, and Junkrat wasn’t helping. He wrapped the leather belt around Junkrat’s arm and yanked hard, tying off the makeshift tourniquet.

“You’re more scared than what I am,” Junkrat accused.

Roadhog ignored him. He was stressed, upset, guilt-ridden -- worried, even, but he wasn’t _scared_. “That’ll keep you alive for now. Still needs to come off before necrosis sets in,” he said, doing his level best to keep his voice impassive. His mind was racing, trying to figure out what the hell to do next. They were in the middle of nowhere, and even if he had known where the nearest hospital was, they weren’t exactly the kind of clientele that a respectable medical institution catered to. They’d be arrested the second Junkrat was stabilised. No, Roadhog had a better idea.

“I know someone,” he said, scooping Junkrat up to carry him to the sidecar. “From the Australian Liberation Front. She used to be a doctor before she was displaced.”

He hadn’t seen Dr. Ava Pennington in at least a decade. After the omnium explosion, he had stayed behind in the wreckage and carved out a place for himself on the outskirts of the cutthroat society that sprang up in its wake. With the radiation poisoning spreading to his already-weak lungs, the idea of donning a gas mask and starting a solitary life of crime had held a certain allure. He was _angry_ , he’d lost everything he’d ever owned to the omnics, and he needed a fresh start in a place where no one knew his face or his name, where he didn’t have to answer to anyone but himself.

Ava, on the other hand… Roadhog imagined that if she hadn’t been married, Ava would have traveled down the same path as he had, perhaps even become Queen of Junkertown herself. Maybe he wouldn’t have minded the sad excuse for a city so much if Ava was the one in charge. But Rosa was a civilian, an innocent bystander as her wife conspired with the rest of the Australian Liberation Front to take out the omnium. Ava was eccentric, she preferred the isolation of the Outback, but she wasn’t willing to uproot Rosa and put her life in danger. Instead of staying behind and building Junkertown -- or, in Roadhog’s case, disdainfully watching from afar -- she and Rosa retired to their own quiet house on the outskirts of the Outback. They were well removed from both Junker society and civilised society, but close enough to commute. The last time he’d spoken to Ava, she had been talking about trying to do medicine part-time, aiming for three twelve-hour shifts a week as a trauma surgeon in the city. She’d know how to fix this.

Junkrat drew what remained of his arm close to his body and curled inward, hiding his face in Roadhog’s chest. “I don’t want any maggots in me,” he mumbled. “She’s not puttin’ them in me, I don’t want maggots in me, I won’t do it, you can’t make me.”

Roadhog had heard plenty of non sequiturs from Junkrat in the short time they had been together, but this one threw him for a loop. Baffled, he said, “Maggots-- No one’s putting maggots in you.”

“She’s not doin’ it, no, no.”

“I won’t let her put maggots in you.”

Junkrat closed his eyes and nodded. “Okay. Good. Okay.”

Roadhog settled Junkrat into the sidecar of his chopper. He wrapped the blanket they had bought for Piglet around Junkrat in a last-ditch attempt to keep him from slipping into irreversible shock. Night was quickly descending upon them, and once the blistering sun sunk below the horizon, a chill would settle through the desert -- the last thing a wounded Junkrat needed to contend with.

As he revved up the engine, a long-forgotten feeling gnawed at the pit of his stomach. It wasn’t until they were roaring through the Outback, kicking up a trail of dust in their wake, that he realised that Junkrat’s observation had been right -- for the first time in years, fear was clawing at his insides.

\---

Junkrat had slipped into unconsciousness during the trip to Ava’s. The pain and physical exhaustion from the late hour proved too much for him, and, unable to cope, his body shut down. Roadhog scooped him up, letting the bloody stump of his arm dangle freely, and carried him to the house.

Junkrat’s scrawny body was tiny in his massive hands. It took little effort to shift his weight to one side and bang on the front door with deafening force.

Ava answered the door in her echidna-patterned pajamas, bedhead rendering her untamed mane of tightly-wound curls wilder than ever. Her jaw dropped, eyes widening as she looked up at Roadhog. “Mako--!”

“Fix him.” Roadhog held out Junkrat’s broken body. There would be time for pleasantries later. They had precious little time, and right now, he was more concerned with saving the life of this freak he barely knew than he was with greeting an old friend.

Ava shut her mouth and tried to peer around his massive frame. “Yeah, sure, I can fix that right up -- you got the broken off bits hiding back there?”

Roadhog glowered at her. “He’s dying, Ava,” he said coldly.

Ava couldn’t see his expression through the thick lenses of his gas mask, but she read his displeasure loud and clear. “Sorry, big fella, I hear you, that was in poor taste. Well, what are you just standing around for? Get him in here, let’s have a looky loo.”

She stood aside to let him in and shifted into doctor mode, striding into the kitchen with purpose. Junkrat shifted in Roadhog’s arms, tightening his grip on the bloody stump clutched to his chest, as if he knew his suffering was about to get much worse. Ava quickly sanitised the kitchen table, a facsimile of a sterile operating workspace, and Roadhog carefully lowered Junkrat onto it.

“Rosa, doll?” Ava called. “Come give me a hand!”

Ava’s wife appeared behind them, her round face furrowed with concern. “Honey...?” she said, pausing to drink in the scene before her.

“Hi.” Roadhog lifted a hand in greeting.

Rosa’s eyes lit up in recognition. “Mako!”

“It’s Roadhog now,” he reminded her. He’d made the decision to shed his birth name after the omnium incident, instead adopting the nickname bestowed upon him by Ava and some of the other Australian Liberation Front members. He’d earned a reputation as a roadhog from the other bikers in their gang of rebels, and he’d latched onto the moniker with a proud ferocity. As the Junker society rose from the ashes of the omnium explosion, he found that he was far from alone. Countless Junkers adopted names that fit their reinvented identities or places in Junkertown’s lawless society.

“Roadhog,” Rosa repeated, nodding. She looked past him at the man bleeding out on her kitchen table. “What do you need me to do?” she asked Ava, brown eyes alert and focused despite the late hour.

Ava had already snapped on a pair of rubber gloves and was undoing Junkrat’s tourniquet. “First things first: whip me up a couple litres of sterile saline solution,” she said. “Real slipshod job with the tourniquet here, Roadhog,” she added, handing him the old bandanna and belt.

“I was under a lot of pressure.” He stuffed the bloody bandanna back in his pocket and draped Junkrat’s belt over the back of a chair for safekeeping.

“No excuse for getting sloppy!” She wagged a reproachful finger at him. “I didn’t waste my expertise teaching you for you to go forgetting it the second the going gets tough!” She raised her voice to address Rosa, who was already pouring water into the electric kettle to prepare the saline solution. “Oh, and babe, change the sheets on the bed when you get a sec -- this poor sod’s gonna need somewhere to sleep after all this.”

Ava hefted her bag of tools onto the table and searched through it, pulling out various surgical instruments and muttering to herself as she took inventory. “Bone saw, suture anchors, scalpel, forceps…”

She noticed Roadhog looking at her and sensed his masked concern. “What do you look so worried for? I’m _very_ good at my job, remember?” She grinned up at him. He presumed that it was intended to put him at ease, but there was something about Ava’s smile that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Not for the first time in his life, he was glad that she was on their side.

Ava held up two fingers. “Steps one and two to sorting out this mess: irrigation and surgical debridement,” she explained. “Layman’s terms, gonna flush out all the nasty debris in that gaping wound as best as I can and remove all the dead and contaminated tissue and any other foreign material that’s really lodged up in there. Once that’s done, then we can focus on closing it all up. How’s that saline looking, Rosa?”

She left Roadhog’s side to fetch the sterile solution that Rosa was mixing together. Roadhog leaned over Junkrat, searching his face for any signs of life. He thought he saw Junkrat’s eyes flutter open for the briefest of seconds. “I’m gonna fix this,” he muttered, his voice low so that only Junkrat could hear him -- if he even could. His grip on the conscious world seemed tenuous at best.

He stepped back as Ava returned with a jar of saline solution and eyed the row of gleaming surgical instruments she had arranged on the table. “Do you have anaesthesia?” he asked.

She shook her head, curls bouncing from side to side. “‘Fraid not. I’m not an anaesthetist, and that’s all highly regulated anyway. Let’s hope your man here has a high tolerance for pain, eh?”

Roadhog’s brow furrowed in concern. Life would be a lot easier for Junkrat if he could be knocked out during this ordeal.

Rosa placed a hand on his arm, and he flinched at the sudden contact. “He’s in good hands, Roadhog,” she said softly. She had a warm, wet washcloth in hand and used it to wipe the dried blood caked on Junkrat’s chest and face.

“The best!” Ava agreed jovially. She bent over Junkrat. “Oi, don’t know if you can hear me, but just hang in there, alright? This might sting just a tad, but never you worry, it’ll all be over soon!” She thumped Junkrat’s good arm in a somewhat reassuring gesture and started humming to herself as she began washing out the bloody stump with a steady stream of saline solution. Ava’s bedside manner perplexed Roadhog; she was so relentlessly cheerful in the face of grievous bodily injury, and her humming, while perfectly pleasant, felt oddly morbid. He thought he recognised the tune from the opening theme of an old, black-and-white horror film he’d seen back in the day. Frankenstein? Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, perhaps?

“Toccata and Fugue in D Minor,” Ava said out loud, as if she had read his mind. “Bach’s finest organ piece, in my humble opinion.” She bent her head closer to inspect the wound, cleansed of the surface dirt and grit. She reached for the scalpel and forceps and--

Junkrat whimpered, a sound so pitiful that it stabbed Roadhog in the heart.

He took a step closer. “What can I do?” he asked, peering over Ava’s shoulder and watching as she concentrated on excising a mutilated piece of tissue.

“Stop breathing down my neck, is what!” Ava said, shrugging him off.

There was no malice in her words, but still, Roadhog took a step back, suddenly self-conscious of the way his labored breathing wheezed through the filters of his gas mask.

“Actually, wash your hands and hold this a second.” He quickly obliged. She handed him the bloody scalpel, which he pinched between his thumb and forefinger until she held out her hand expectantly. “You’re real lucky you have me and my tools for this, you know. There’s more unsavory methods of debridement out there. Did you know that maggot therapy is a thing? Green bottle fly larvae will eat necrotic tissue, but it takes a few days, and between you and me, it’s pretty gross.”

All at once, Junkrat’s slurred rambling about maggots made perfect sense. Roadhog looked down at Junkrat and his peg leg with newfound clarity. Junkrat had told him all about how he’d lost his leg in an accident with one of his mines but failed to mention the gory aftermath.

He wondered what other things his partner had never shared with him.

Roadhog adopted the unofficial role of surgical technologist, handing Ava whatever instruments she needed. He watched the proceedings with a growing sense of dread, unable to look away. Ava activated the bone saw, and the electric buzzing gave way to a sickening grinding noise as she shaved off another two inches of severed bone.

“Exposed bone gets infected just like everything else,” Ava explained over the loud whirr, “and I need to hollow the arm out, so to speak. Create enough leftover skin to seal up this stub once all those fleshy bits are tidied up and anchored down. Related: get those suture anchors ready, I’m going to need them soon.”

Roadhog said nothing as Ava concentrated on rearranging the remaining tissue into what she referred to as a “soft tissue envelope -- sort of like a fatty cushion, it’ll make it less painful for him, especially if he ever wants to try for a prosthetic like that leg of his.” She drew the muscles over the radius and ulna and placed sutures through them, anchoring them to the severed bones.

Once everything was screwed down and secure, Ava declared that she no longer needed his assistance. Roadhog retreated to watch from a distance as Ava began the painstaking process of closing the wound, arranging the remaining flaps of skin just so and stitching it up.

“Oh, are you awake?” Ava said aloud. “I’m Dr. Ava Pennington --  you’re gonna be okay.”

Junkrat gave a groan, and Roadhog, who had sank heavily on a kitchen chair, knocked it over in his haste to stand up. By the time he reached the kitchen table, Junkrat’s eyes had closed and his jaw had gone slack. Still, hearing Junkrat’s voice and knowing that he was momentarily lucid eased some of the weight on Roadhog’s chest.

He sat back down, the sudden spike of adrenaline coupled with the rest of the night’s labors tuckering him out.

“Well, there’s nothing we can do but wait it out,” Ava finally announced, wiping her bloody hands on an old dishtowel. She turned to face Roadhog. “Change his dressings, keep an eye on the swelling, give him meds when he comes ‘round, and hope his li’l body’s strong enough to fight off infection. And try to make him comfortable in the meantime.”

“There’s fresh sheets on the bed,” Rosa added, “if you want to move him there.”

Roadhog nodded and stood up. His limbs felt like lead as he crossed the short distance to the kitchen table and picked Junkrat up.

Ava’s and Rosa’s house was a small, studio-style place where the kitchen, living room, and bedroom bled into one another. A flimsy, decorative sliding room divider offered the mere illusion of privacy; it didn’t extend far enough to cordon the bedroom off from the rest of the house. It creaked as Rosa pulled it open. Roadhog had the impression it was rarely used.

There were signs of their hosts’ interrupted lives -- Rosa’s book on the nightstand, Ava’s rumpled clothes on the floor, directly next to the laundry hamper that stood in the corner -- but the sheets were clean, and that was all that mattered, momentary guilt be damned.

Rosa pulled the covers back so that Roadhog could tuck Junkrat in. The three of them circled around the bed, eyeing their patient.

“What is he?” Ava asked.

Rosa gasped and swatted her wife. “Ava! He’s a human being!”

Ava cowered with a laugh, hands raised in surrender. “Not what I meant! Not what I meant! I meant, what’s he _to you_? I mean, I haven’t seen you in years, Mako -- last I saw of you, you were striking out on your own. Then you show up on my doorstep with some bloke who’s down an arm and a leg. What is he, boyfriend, business partner, friend...?” She waved her hand, encouraging him to fill in the blank.

Roadhog briefly considered it. “Partner in crime,” he answered. He wasn’t willing to define things further -- even calling Junkrat his partner in crime was being generous, given the turbulent start to their relationship.

Ava shrugged. “Works for me!”

There was a moment’s lull as they watched Junkrat twitch fitfully in his sleep.

“Bit of an odd-looking fella, isn’t he?” Ava said. “How’dya meet?”

“We won’t pry further,” Rosa hastened to add, planting her hands on her wife’s shoulders and pivoting her around.

“Oh, sure, plenty of time to catch up later!” Ava said, dutifully allowing Rosa to steer her towards the living room. “We should crash now, brilliant idea. It’s been a long night and your mate here needs his rest.” She paused, casting Roadhog a shrewd look. “You planning on staying up a little longer to keep an eye on him?”

He nodded mutely. He knew Ava expected a more thorough answer, but he didn’t see the sense in responding verbally when he could communicate the bare minimum silently.

She tapped the side of her nose with her finger. “I know you, old friend, you did the same with Riptide, remember?” Roadhog remembered. He’d looked after his fellow Australian Liberation Front member when he was injured, and the man had repaid him by robbing him blind. Roadhog had given up on trusting people after that. Ava -- and her wife, by extension -- was the exception to the rule. The jury was still out as far as Junkrat was concerned, but he had proven to be a man of his word thus far. He couldn’t count for shit, but he tried his hardest to adhere to their 50-50 rule.

“Don’t stay up too late,” Ava continued. “I’ve already got one patient, I don’t need you getting ill too! I might be good, but I can tell this guy’s gonna be a handful…”

“Ava, honey, why don’t you go get the sleeping bags set up?” Rosa said with as much sweetness as she could muster. She pushed Ava over the invisible line that separated the living room from the bedroom and extended the divider to block her from view.

“Can do!” Ava’s voice floated through the screen.

Rosa gave Roadhog an apologetic grimace. “I’m sorry she’s… the way that she is. But you know all about that, don’t you?”

Roadhog nodded again and sank down in a chintzy armchair. He couldn’t tell if it belonged to the bedroom or the living room. He was very familiar with Ava’s matter-of-fact, occasionally insensitive remarks. She meant well -- as far as he could tell, anyway -- and he appreciated her candor. Her oddities had, in some bizarre way, prepared him for Junkrat’s quirks and spastic demeanor.

Rosa placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “She is right, though. You should get some sleep, Roadhog,” she said. “Stress and no sleep can’t be good for your health.”

“I can sleep when I’m dead.” He didn’t take his eyes off of Junkrat.

Rosa bit her lip but nodded. “If that’s how you feel.” She opened the linen closet and pulled out a patchwork quilt.

Roadhog finally looked up at Rosa as she draped the blanket over his shoulders.

“You have to take care of yourself too, you know,” she told him. “You’re no good to Junkrat if you run yourself ragged.”

“I’m no good to him _now_ ,” he said quietly.

Rosa gave him a small, sad smile. “I know,” she said. “I know _you_ think that. But I’m sure he would say different.”

_What the hell did I hire ya for? I’m down a fuckin’ arm thanks to you!_

Roadhog didn’t share Rosa’s convictions. He drew the quilt down his shoulders and turned his attention back to Junkrat.

Rosa waited a few seconds for him to answer. When it became apparent that he had no such intentions, she stood up. “Well, promise you’ll at least _try_ to catch a few winks then?”

Roadhog nodded wordlessly.

“Good.” Rosa stood up and gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “Ava and I will be in the living room, alright? Just give us a shout if you need us. The couch is all yours, whenever you’re ready to get some rest.”

Rosa extended the screen to its fullest width to afford Roadhog a modicum of privacy, leaving him to wonder how and when he had gotten so invested in the wellbeing of the little freak he had tried to kill just a few short months ago.

Junkrat squirmed on the bed, perspiration beading on his forehead, and struck out with his foot. The sheet tangled around his leg, and Roadhog realised that Junkrat was still wearing his peg leg.

He hadn’t given the peg leg much thought after their first encounter; Junkrat wasn’t the first Junker with a missing limb he’d met, and he used his prosthetic leg effortlessly. It was a natural extension, in Roadhog’s mind’s eye.

Still, he knew it couldn’t be comfortable to sleep in. There were nights where Junkrat didn’t remove it, nights where they were both on edge and needed to make a quick getaway. The next day, his usual awkward gait turned into a full-fledged limp, and Roadhog would catch him uncomfortably adjusting the socket. Nine times out of ten, Junkrat removed the prosthetic when he was sleeping. Hell, he’d done it their first night together -- a bold move, considering that not 24 hours prior, Roadhog had been attempting to kill him.

He couldn’t imagine the kind of pain Junkrat was in right now. The least he could do was make sure he was as comfortable as possible.

Roadhog stood up and approached the side of the bed. “Hey,” he muttered. He didn’t know if Junkrat could hear him in this state, but it didn’t feel right to touch Junkrat without telling him. Roadhog was leery of physical contact from anyone but the closest of friends, and while he doubted -- _knew_ \-- that Junkrat didn’t share his reservations, he didn’t want to violate Junkrat’s personal space. “Just gonna take off your leg for you. Hold still.”

Whether or not he heard him, Junkrat stopped fidgeting once Roadhog laid hands on him.

His skin was hot and clammy, a sure sign that a fever was sinking in.

Roadhog untangled Junkrat from the sheets twisted around his legs. He pushed the ragged fabric of Junkrat’s shorts up his right thigh to expose the junction where the socket of his peg leg met flesh. As he figured out how to detach the prosthetic, his thumb traced the scar tissue of Junkrat’s thigh. There was a nasty, twisted gash that ran up the inner part of the stump, and it reminded Roadhog of the battle scar that curved up the side of his own face.

He set the peg leg aside and removed the sock that covered the stump, and Junkrat sighed. Roadhog was sure that the prosthetic liner made the peg leg more comfortable to wear, serving as a barrier between the flesh of the residual limb and the prosthetic itself, but it had to feel good to let the stump breathe every now and then.

The armchair groaned as Roadhog sat back down, pulling it closer to the bedside. He closed his eyes. He was getting tired in spite of himself, but the thought of leaving Junkrat alone when he was feverish left a sour taste in his mouth. He wasn’t used to feeling guilt or compassion -- it had been a long time since he’d connected with anyone enough to particularly care about how his actions affected them.

He thought back to Ava’s question: what was Junkrat to him? He didn’t know how to define their relationship. He had never met anyone quite like Junkrat before. The man was an idiot. He baffled Roadhog on a daily basis. He didn’t _listen_ , and Roadhog was still liable to hit him if he overstepped his physical boundaries. They hadn’t reached the point in this bizarre relationship they had cultivated where Roadhog was comfortable with Junkrat poking his belly, which he tended to do with suicidal regularity.

And yet. Junkrat made him laugh -- truly and genuinely laugh. He had been so good with Piglet. Not a lot of criminals would have been so agreeable to adopting a pet pig. He had been amenable to spending some of their hard-earned cash on luxuries for said pig, and only protested a _little_ when Roadhog had insisted on getting baby oil for Piglet. Somehow, Junkrat had even gotten him to volunteer information about his life as Mako Rutledge, to talk about the pigs he raised before everything went south.

For better or worse, Junkrat was a part of his life now, and as loathe as he was to admit it, he was growing fond of the obnoxious asshole. Fond enough to feel regret, both on a professional and a personal level, for failing to protect him.

When he opened his eyes once more, he found that Junkrat’s brow was furrowed, his face contorted like he was having a particularly bad dream. No stranger to nightmares, Roadhog patted Junkrat’s hand in what he hoped was a reassuring manner. The wrinkle in Junkrat’s brow smoothed out slightly.

Roadhog fell asleep in the chair, his hand still covering Junkrat’s.

“Shut up,” he said when Ava woke him the following morning.

“I didn’t say anything,” she answered, grinning like the cat who caught the canary.

Junkrat surfaced long enough to take some painkillers, but he was in no condition to carry on a conversation with anyone and didn’t seem entirely aware of his surroundings. After blindly taking the medicine he was offered, he nodded off once more, his body shutting down in an attempt to sleep off the pain. Ava confirmed that his temperature had spiked, a sure sign of infection, and they took turns administering cold compresses.

Ava pulled out a puzzle for them to work on in their downtime, giving Roadhog something to focus on asides from his concern about Junkrat. That night, he decided to sleep on the couch -- it reassured him to stay with Junkrat, but sleeping upright in the chair was bad for his back, and he needed a good night’s rest. If he withdrew the screen, he could still keep an eye on the bed from the couch

He checked in on Junkrat before bed, fresh cold compress in hand, only to find that he had kicked his blankets off in his sleep and was shivering violently.

Roadhog frowned and dragged the covers back over him. It wasn’t exactly chilly in the house -- the quilt Rosa had given him the previous night had been more for comfort than to ward off the cold.  

Junkrat stilled for a few moments before thrashing them off again. He trembled like a leaf, curling up in an unconscious attempt to warm himself up.

Roadhog sighed. The fever had yet to break, and Junkrat’s body temperature was obviously swinging from one extreme to the other. He set the cold compress on the nightstand.

There was plenty of room in the king sized bed for him to lay down next to Junkrat, who was so skinny that Roadhog could count his ribs. He wrapped an arm around Junkrat’s waist and pulled him close, hoping that his body heat would be enough to strike that balance between too hot and too cold.

Junkrat stilled, all the tension in his muscles dissipating as he relaxed against Roadhog’s body. His good hand found Roadhog’s arm, and his fingers lightly brushed against his forearm.

Roadhog bent his head so that the snout of his mask snuffled against the ashy tips of Junkrat’s hair. He closed his eyes. He didn’t want to think about how _right_ this felt.

His last conscious thought before drifting off to sleep was that he was going to have a _hell_ of a time explaining this to Ava in the morning.


End file.
